If you hear the phrase ‘magical realism’, the first example your mind might travel to is J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Wizards, witches, monsters. Yet, at its core, there’s a human story about self-discovery and conquering one’s inner demons. Essentially, the term encompasses fictional narratives which discuss everyday lives that are interwoven with fantastical elements. One of the first cited examples of this genre in literature is Franz Kafka’s 1915 work ‘The Metamorphosis’, but magical realism ultimately became associated with many examples of Latin American literature. The term was first coined by Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier in the 1940s.
In the case of The Midnight Club, the magical realism element comes through the genre of horror. Dead people are seen, jump scares occur and unnatural happenings take place before people’s eyes. The content, however, revolves largely around terminal illness, mostly cancer, and focuses on a group of teenagers taking refuge in a hospice ran by a mysterious doctor. Drama, usually mixed with romance, is generally the mainstay genre for cancer stories (see Love Story, Life in a Year, and The Fault in Our Stars for a few examples), and it’s interesting to see cancer depicted here in a more fantastical setting.
Fantasy, for the most part, is where the narrative starts off. We hear coughing and subsequently see blood flowing in a bathtub before the camera cuts to main character Ilonka. Instead of a more realistic, gruesome shot showing Illonka coughing up blood and the blood falling into the bath in the same image, the horror element is introduced through the detached, slowly moving blood in the bathroom, a not-so-subtle nod to the flowing liquid in Psycho’s infamous shower scene.
Reality blends into the narrative, however, when Illonka is sitting opposite a doctor and informed of her complicatedly named diagnosis. Illonka asks for the diagnosis to be repeated, and then just refers to it more simplistically as thyroid cancer. This moment resonated particularly strongly for me here; while I always refer to my own previous diagnosis as a brain tumour, the specific type is technically called a PNET (primary central nervous system; I had to look this term up on google as I always forget it). It’s small but significant moments like these that interested me initially.
Then, in this same first episode, the conversation between Illonka and hospice head Georgina Stanton was particularly refreshing, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never come across anything similar in television or film. Stanton adamantly refutes ‘the language of battle’ in cancer experiences, assuring Ilonka that, at her hospice, life ‘isn’t about battles, it’s about permission to leave the battlefield’. I never came across this language in relation to myself when I was going through treatment, and I could understand how it might be used by relatives to create a coping mechanism and a sense of power, but such language usually rang hollow when I heard it, as if discrediting the doctors, nurses and surgeons who were directly responsible for my physical survival. The horror genre works in tandem with realist narrative as Illonka informs a fellow patient that ‘I did three rounds of chemo, it takes a lot to scare me’ as she is about to find out about The Midnight Club.
Other nice, unexpected touches are there too. As Illonka watches love interest Kevin dress for prom, she remarks how much she misses her hair and, once Kevin returns from the experiences, he exasperatedly relates how other students described him as ‘brave’, and how he was nominated as prom king. As with ‘battle’, I didn’t experience this language too much, but could also sympathise with its usage as a way for others to try and engage sensitively with my experience. In another episode, Illonka is gifted a wig by fellow patient Cheri and experiences intense joy at seeing hair on her head for the first time in ages. Again, effective stuff, reminding me of the happiness I first felt at being able to have a proper wig and look more like the rest of the girls at an all-girls secondary school, where hair felt like a particularly important symbol of identity and individuality.
There’s still ‘battle’ language here and there which doesn’t quite work for me (Ilonka declares at one point that she is ‘waiting on cancer with a Molotov and a machete’), but this is probably necessary language for an audience that mostly won’t have had these experiences. And it’s nice that the magical realism elements don’t ever infringe on moments of reality. It’s not like seances lead to instant cures.
It’ll probably sound a bit odd, but I was particularly amazed at one point when patient Amesh is seen with a hickman line inserted into his body. This term is never actually mentioned, but seeing this thing which I’d had inserted when I was ill for the first time on screen was really unexpected. Hickman lines are basically a series of wires inserted into the body through a nifty operation that allow injections that would normally have to go the skin in relatively painful fashion to just go directly through the wires. I guess it’s difficult to articulate, but it’s really satisfying to see more realistic ways to depict cancer treatment on screen that just an IV drip and someone with a bald head. Which reminds me of watching Meet the Parents in hospital while attached to an IV drip, and watching the film starting off with an IV drop and a hospital bed, which was really meta in a different kind of way.
Apart from a slightly expected shmaltzy ending, The Midnight Club provides some interesting and novel portrayals of cancer through a genre that’s rarely used to depict the illness. I was also quite relieved to hear that the series has recently been cancelled despite plans for more seasons. It feels like a particularly American thing to go for more content than what’s necessary, and I think it would’ve been quite exploitative to extend The Midnight Club much further considering its subject matter. As it is, the season is a nice, contained depiction of the horrors and moments of relief involved in a crippling illness.
(I’ve written a decent number of articles in the past concerning the portrayal of cancer on the small screen and the big screen; check some of them out below)
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